Posted by Joshua on Wednesday, December 12th, 2012

Worldview: Why is U.S. still refusing to arm rebels?
By Trudy Rubin
The Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday, Nov. 9. 2012

Now that the U.S. elections are over, the Obama administration is applying a full-court press for a political solution in Syria. Finally.

But U.S. officials still refuse to openly engage with, or give military aid to, Syrian rebel commanders, who will exercise major influence after the fall of Bashar al-Assad. Instead, the Obama team has been outsourcing the role of aiding military rebels to Saudi Arabia and the tiny Gulf emirate of Qatar, with the Saudis now taking the lead.

At a meeting last week in Antalya, Turkey, more than 300 commanders from the rebel Free Syrian Army agreed under pressure from Saudi Arabia and Qatar to form a unified command structure, in return for promises they would get more advanced weapons. Yet secular Syrian rebel officers told me during my recent trip to Turkey and Syria that Washington’s past reliance on the Gulf states has meant that most military aid has gone to Islamists.

Previous U.S. decisions to outsource the job of arming Muslim rebels to Gulf states also backfired. Qatar reportedly turned weapons over to Islamic militants during last year’s conflict in Libya, and the Saudis gave weapons to the worst militants in the Afghan war against the Soviets. In both cases, our outsourcing of responsibility harmed our own security interests.

So why are we making the same mistake in Syria?

One reason is President Obama’s extreme reluctance to get involved in another Mideast war, even if the U.S. role were confined to helping Syrians do the fighting. Instead, U.S. officials have insisted that the Syrian conflict can only be resolved politically. Apart from humanitarian aid, the United States has provided only nonlethal assistance to unarmed rebels. It has stuck to that position even as the real battle for Syria is being fought on the ground.

After two years of failed efforts to unify the Syrian political opposition, U.S. and European officials, along with Qatar, have now godfathered a new Syrian transitional leadership body. The United States is set to recognize the Syrian Opposition Council, or SOC, this week.

This is good news. If the SOC holds together, it can provide a channel through which to funnel desperately needed humanitarian aid to liberated areas of Syria. Such aid could in turn strengthen the hand of civilian leadership councils that have emerged in areas freed from Assad’s rule.

U.S. officials also hope this new council will exert civilian control over the rebel military forces and ultimately help negotiate the exit of Assad. But the military struggle is fast outpacing efforts to broker a political solution.

As rebel fighters gain ground, they may have little time for the Cairo-based SOC or the wishes of U.S. officials who have given neither weapons nor money. They are more likely to listen to Gulf countries that provide both – and whose interests differ from ours.

Consider what has happened over the last two years. For months, opposition activists have urged the United States to vet and help secular opposition commanders, including high-level army defectors.

Instead, this task was outsourced, mainly to Qatar, which never managed to create a centralized military leadership structure. Money and weapons – some from Gulf states, some from wealthy religious Muslims – flowed directly to local commanders, many of them militant Islamists.

Militia leaders and individual fighters grew militant-style beards to get weapons. Mohammed Ghanem of the Syrian American Council recounted asking a fighter at a checkpoint near Aleppo why he was working with Jabhat al-Nusra, a jihadi group connected with al-Qaeda. The man angrily retorted, “They are the ones with the guns.”

U.S. officials repeatedly refused to supply the ground-to-air weapons the rebels desperately needed to repel massive government bombing attacks on civilians, even when groups such as the SSG proposed detailed control systems. The administration feared such weapons might fall into the wrong hands. Now rebel commanders have overrun Syrian army bases and seized ground-to-air weapons on their own, leaving the United States with no say whatsoever on their use.

“People think the United States is not serious,” says Louay Sakka, a spokesman for the Syrian Support Group, which lobbies for the more moderate wing of the Free Syrian Army. “Nonlethal aid will not remove Assad from political power. A political solution will not work without a military part.”

Now the Saudis are taking the lead in setting up a central Free Syrian Army command system intended to coordinate the flow of arms and funds to rebel fighters. The system will supposedly exclude groups with al-Qaeda ties, such as Jabhat al-Nusra.

Perhaps the Saudis (and Qataris) will favor professional rebel officers, regardless of whether they have beards. Perhaps not. Past history gives reason for concern. Meantime, the United States, which reportedly had a small CIA presence at the meeting in Turkey, remains in the background.

“If you don’t want others to have influence, you have to fill the void,” says Amr Al Azm, a Syrian activist and history professor at Shawnee State University in Ohio. “You can own the thing or let someone else own it.”

When it comes to shaping the military outcome in Syria, which will affect our interests throughout the Mideast, do we really want the Saudis to own it? Can we really afford to lead from behind?

As western and Arab governments prepare to meet in Marrakech today under the “Friends of Syria” rubric, the US is scrambling to adapt its Syria policy to an increasingly complex reality that is changing rapidly, largely beyond western influence….

Bomb attacks in the village of Aqrab killed or wounded at least 125 civilians, said the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), which could not immediately give a breakdown of the casualties.

“We cannot know whether the rebels were behind this attack, but if they were, this would be the largest-scale revenge attack against Alawites,” said observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman.

Al Jazeera’s Rula Amin, reporting from Beirut, said: “What happened there is obviously for many people in Syria an alarming sign, especially because many of those who have been killed are Alawites.”

Aqrab is located near Houla, a majority Sunni Muslim village where 108 people, including 49 children and 34 women, were massacred on May 25 in what was widely blamed on pro-regime armed groups despite denials from Damascus

Diplomats take their late planes to Morocco for the Friends of Syria meeting. The Old Powers will dominate. The new regional actors have been sidelined. The third part of the series is on Western Plans. The first was on Refugees.

My last comment (90.) under the previous heading would have been more appropriate to this heading.

It seems the US is scrambling to gain some influence with an opposition that seems to be succeeding beyond expectations. The US and Western role has not been good, to say the least.

At a minimum, they could have sent warnings to the Syrian regime not to bombard their own cities from the air. They did not. Rather, we have had to watch one city after another get pummeled by regime forces.

All those people who complained about the US/French/British role in Libya should be doubly upset now. This intervention was an intervention of absence. R2P? What does it mean when 40,000 deaths later and nearly a year of near full-scale war no one has been really protected. That the Russians and Chinese provided an excuse is not relevant. NATO didn’t bother with that excuse when it intervened in Kosovo.

It seems to me that the vast majority of armaments that the rebels have are not supplied by outsiders at all. They are procured one way or another from government stocks. If someone has different information, please let me know. Now that they are gradually taking over, the West is rushing to play a more influential role. How pathetic.

@Visitor, I agree that recognition can only hurt the Syrian opposition. If anyone needed a reminder of how discredited US policy is, one only need look at the reaction in the latest Gaza crisis, followed by the lack of action to the “E-1” settlement policy announcement by Israel (not to mention opposing a Palestinian state).

The US is implementing Bibi Nethanyahu’s plan for Israel’s security made in 1990[ check out Google] according to an interview of a retired US General.

In October, 2007, Gen. Wesley Clark gave a speech to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco in which he denounced what he called “a policy coup” engineered by neocons in the wake of 9/11.

After recounting how a Pentagon source had told him weeks after 9/11 of the Pentagon’s plan to attack Iraq notwithstanding its non-involvement in 9/11, this is how Clark described the aspirations of the “coup” being plotted by Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and what he called “a half dozen other collaborators from the Project for the New American Century”:

Six weeks later, I saw the same officer, and asked: “Why haven’t we attacked Iraq? Are we still going to attack Iraq?”

He said: “Sir, it’s worse than that. He said – he pulled up a piece of paper off his desk – he said: “I just got this memo from the Secretary of Defense’s office. It says we’re going to attack and destroy the governments in 7 countries in five years –

” we’re going to start with Iraq, and then we’re going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.”

Clark said the aim of this plot was this: “They wanted us to destabilize the Middle East, turn it upside down, make it under our control.”

He then recounted a conversation he had had ten years earlier with Paul Wolfowitz — back in 1991 — in which the then-number-3-Pentagon-official, after criticizing Bush 41 for not toppling Saddam, told Clark: “But one thing we did learn [from the Persian Gulf War] is that we can use our military in the region – in the Middle East – and the Soviets won’t stop us.

And we’ve got about 5 or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet regimes – Syria, Iran [sic], Iraq – before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us.” Clark said he was shocked by Wolfowitz’s desires because, as Clark put it: “the purpose of the military is to start wars and change governments? It’s not to deter conflicts?”

Make up your mind. You want to overthrow Bashar al Assad with the kids in the woods? and without weapons?

The US, Russia and the EU are dictating the rules now of what they want to see in Syria. The arrogant and corrupted opposition have given Syria on a silver and bloody plate to these external powers by calling Turkey, NATO, France and now Al Qaeeda to rescue them. Now, it is too late to go back. They can blame only themselves for the overpowering interference of these powers.

Many Syrian residents are fed up with rebel fighters as the conflict drags on in the once-thriving commercial centre.

“Our country is being destroyed. If this is the revolution, I don’t want it. I have to stress that I am not a supporter of the regime, because they used to oppress us. But now, we are being oppressed 100 times more.”

“We used to work and have jobs. We just want to live in peace,” Mohammed Ali said. “The rebels promised to bring freedom but there is no safety. They promised us better lives, but we aren’t even able to afford to buy bread.”

Make up your mind. You want to overthrow Bashar al Assad with the kids in the woods? and without weapons?”

Ewe @4,

I made up my mind long ago. When will you make up yours?

There are lots of weapons in Syria that belong to the Syrian people. FSA with the help of Jabhat al-Nusra are reclaiming those weapons back to their rightful owners. Why should we owe favors to ANY such feeble so-called superpowers? Are you not aware of my latest most favored phrases?

“FSA is a Superpower in and by itself drawing its power from the Infinite Power of the All Powerful”

Obviously the offer of ‘recognition’ is a bargaining chip to oblige the opposition to enter into a dialog with the regime without removing Bashar al Assad, a condition they have been sticking to for 2 years.
Yet, without recognizing the coalition as a “governement in exile” and with neither weapons nor diplomatic recognition attached to it, it is largely a symbolic gesture to make them ‘happy’ and flexible enough to become a partner in negotiations with the regime. Their future in Syria will depend on their ability to be accepted by the Syrian people should there be elections. The SNC has been craving for that all along the FOS meetings in 2011 and 2012.

Notice the strange changes of wording. Bashar should not resign and leave anymore, he should “stand aside’, not even “step’ aside… Do they mean that Bashar will be “standing” aside overlooking the process?

“A draft declaration at the meeting states that the members were prepared to recognise the opposition coalition as “the legitimate representative of the Syrian people”. It also called on President Asad to “stand aside” in order to allow “a sustainable political transition” process.”

“The rebels promised to bring freedom but there is no safety. They promised us better lives, but we aren’t even able to afford to buy bread.”

Only an Aleppan can expect life to go on as usual in the middle of a war zone. Was it the FSA who bombed the bread lines and electricity plants? I am fed up of having to read the constant complaining of Aleppans who will whine a most grievous whine to the nearest foreign journalist about how they are for the revolution, except when it interferes with their nights of tarneeb.

Numerous Syrian cities have had to face the regime’s wrath, but Aleppo leads the way in whines per minute. These people were never for the revolution, they were happy to let the entire country and especially the Aleppan countryside burn just as long as the fire didn’t reach them.

Well, the fire did reach them, as anyone with half a working brain cell could have foreseen. Let this be a lesson to everyone; if you refuse to take risks to shape events, don’t whine when you become victims of those events. Did a single Aleppan lose any sleep back in February when I and numerous Homsis like me were being shelled viciously by the regime?

The bottom line is, if half the Aleppans currently begging on the streets of Lebanon had come out to demonstrate last summer, countless Syrian lives would have been saved.

Part of the conditions dictated by the USA for the ‘recognition’ is for the coalition to win the hearts and mind of the Syrians.

Moaz has started the PR preaching: We value the Alawites, we value women etc…
As long as Moaz has no leverage and influence on the FSA and their Al Qaeeda islamists allies who are killing alawites and promising a second class role for women, his preachings are worthless.

He has a steep mountain to climb and he is been watched by the USA now. If he succeeds, he will stand as a potential player in the future of Syria. But in my view, there is too much hatred, revenge, blood, twisted ideologies and dirty money in Syria now for him to succeed.

I read that you are blaming the people of Aleppo for having been neutral and preferring peace over violence.
You call them cowards while we all know who holds the weapons and threaten them. I admire them for their passive resistance to the foreign barbarian invading their city and bringing only destruction, hatred and divisions. The people of Aleppo are the real heroes.
I guess you must be in a state of shock watching the turns of the events to make such a bitter statement

A series of explosions in the Syrian village of Aqrab has left at least 125 people dead, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports. Those killed come from the Alawite minority, which is loyal to the country’s President Bashar Assad.

­Conflicting reports on what happened have emerged, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The first version says 10 pro-regime gunmen were barricaded in residential buildings, along with 150 civilians of Alawite origin. A delegation sent inside to negotiate the removal of civilians from the buildings were then barred from leaving. The standoff was followed by clashes between pro-government militia and rebel fighters, with the detonation of explosives resulting in casualties. The second version of the events focuses on a string of blasts that took place near the homes of Alawites in the village. A third version entails pro-Assad forces holding Alawite civilians hostage in a building. When opposition fighters reportedly attempted to free them, explosions ensued, leading to up to 150 deaths.

US President Barack Obama has recognized the main Syrian opposition group as a “legitimate representative” of the Syrian people. This brings the US in line with its allies, including Britain, France and several Arab states.

The president of the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), Moaz al-Khatib, has expressed his coalition’s opposition to any Takfiri mentality (one that considers other sects as infidels worth killing). However, many SNC members when interviewed by al-Jazeera have openly expressed their dissatisfaction with the US recent decision to list the al-Qaeda affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra (Nusra Front) as a terrorist organization, as they said they need it to win in Syria. The Nusra Front is the primary Takfiri group in Syria, where its attacks have been focused not only on government facilities and checkpoints but also on civilians belonging to non-Sunni religious sects, such as Christians, Druze, Alawites as well as other ethnic groups (Kurds, Armenians).

CHEAP P.R. STUNT THAT HAS A LIFE SPAN OF 90 DAYS. NO ONE IN SYRIA CARE ABOUT THESE PEOPLE. THESE STOOGES REPRESENT 50 YEARS OF SYRIA’S FILTH. THE WORST OF SUNNI BAATHIST, THE INSIDER BUSINESS DEALING BRIBER, AND THE MUKHABRAT APPROVED MOSQUE SPEAKER WITH OIL INTEREST. DESPARADOS

Canada is holding off recognizing the Syria opposition coalition as the sole representative of the country, even as the list of countries making that distinction grows to include the United States.

Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, speaking Wednesday from Marrakech, Morocco, where he is at a meeting of the Friends of the Syrian People, said his country recognizes the opposition has made “a significant accomplishment. We recognize they are representative.

“I guess the difference for Canada is: Are they the sole representative. Are we basically recognizing them as a de facto government?

“Canada has not made that decision yet,” Baird said. “Not all countries here have.”

In his speech at the conference, the newly selected president, Mouaz al-Khatib, urged the U.S. to “review” the designation since the group was performing a valuable service in the battle against the regime.

“I guess you must be in a state of shock watching the turns of the events to make such a bitter statement”

And still the menhebakjis continue to take refuge in their fantasy la-la land, where everything is going their way. Just as the Aleppans were too timid to rise up against the regime, they will accommodate themselves to FSA and even Salafi rule. Whining to the foreign press about bread shortages is not “passive resistance”, no matter how much Zoo desperately needs to believe that the Aleppans are in revolt against the FSA.

They want electricity and uninterrupted nights of tarneeb, even if it means the rest of the country goes without. Did a single Aleppan worry about Homs when half the city and entire province had their mobile,Internet,international lines and electricity cut for three months? They can whine all they want, but as can be seen by the rubble of their streets, they have no special place in the heart of the regime, who are prepared to demolish an entire neighborhood to take out a handful of FSA fighters.

What a strange irony that Aleppo today looks alot worse than Homs and Hama.

“Does anyone have a list of the ’100′ countries that “recognized” the coalition as the “sole representative of the Syrian people”?”

Dear God, the menhebakji obsession with the trivia. Whatever the number, it is quadruple the number of friends Athad has left in the international community. Iran couldn’t do much to stop the OIC from giving the Athadstanians a great big khazoooq.

” But in my view, there is too much hatred, revenge, blood, twisted ideologies and dirty money in Syria now for him to succeed.”

And this is why the Alawites are in the terrible and sorry state they are in now; always wishing for exactly the wrong thing. You should be praying Moaz gains some influence, it’s the only hope for the Alawite community that’s left in Syria.

Have you even bothered to think of the alternative? Your beloved Batta is finished, he can’t protect Damascus much less anyone else. Would you prefer the rule of hard line extremists to that of a moderate opposition?

“Numerous Syrian cities have had to face the regime’s wrath, but Aleppo leads the way in whines per minute. These people were never for the revolution, they were happy to let the entire country and especially the Aleppan countryside burn just as long as the fire didn’t reach them.”

Numerous?!? Homs, Hama, Idleb and Daraa (all boarding countries hostile to Syria). Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say numerous cities, not mention the largest cities, refuse to join in this tainted “revolution”?!?

So the punishment for not liking your revolution is to bring destruction to their cities…and they better like it or you’ll burn and rob their most valuable assets! great rational… This revolution is certainly setting new historical precedent for future revolutions to come where the minorities, with help of outside hostile countries, can now determine a country’s future. How is different than chaos?!?

The United States along with up to 100 other countries recognized Syria’s opposition coalition at a “Friends of the Syrian People” conference in Morocco today. President Obama announced formal support for Syrian rebels—which likely opens the door to military as well as humanitarian aid—yesterday just after the State Department designated one rebel faction, Jabhat al-Nusra, as a terrorist organization and an offshoot of al-Qaeda in Iraq.

The confused state of Obama policy on Syria corresponds to the confused state of the Syrian opposition to President Bashar al-Assad. It also puts the United States in the position of supporting some factions that actually honed their fighting skills battling U.S. forces in Iraq, pointed out Naval Postgraduate School professor Glenn Robinson. The most organized opposition force inside Syria is the Muslim Brotherhood, Robinson wrote, and “banking on the well-heeled Syrian expatriate community to come to power for any length of time is a losing bet. The exiles may have won the support of the Obama administration and others, but have little chance of holding power in Syria for any length of time, barring international occupation of the country.”

“Numerous?!? Homs, Hama, Idleb and Daraa (all boarding countries hostile to Syria). Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say numerous cities, not mention the largest cities, refuse to join in this tainted “revolution”?!?”

Again with the fantasy revisionist outlook. It’s like the menhebakjis can’t function without it. Take a look at the Youtube videos and see the numerous cities, towns and villages that came out against this regime. If your president is so popular, lets see him stage another demonstration. Even under fire, the revo holds demonstrations every Friday.

And it isn’t the revo that is punishing Aleppo, it’s the regime that doesn’t care what it hits or destroys. Aleppans should direct their whining towards the source of their grievance. Or maybe it’s very convenient to forget all the bread lines the regime shelled in the city?

Aleppans expect the FSA to come ready with a do-it-yourself institutions of perfect social and economic justice, something they never demanded of the regime. Heck, Aleppans were quite happy to see the rest of the country burn just as long as their nights of tarneeb were not interrupted. Sit on the fence forever, then don’t whine to me when the fence gets burned from right under you.

Landis seemed rather hysterical in a recent video interview that Assad was still in power after nearly two years of war against Syria. And what is with the idea of the Alawite state on the coast? This is ridiculous.

The army is mainly Sunni and hasn’t collapsed into militias. Assad’s wife is Sunni. The vice-president is Sunni.

The U.S. aircraft carrier “Dwight D Eisenhower” has arrived off the shores of Syria.

The multipurpose nuclear attack carrier the U.S.S. Dwight D Eisenhower is leading the naval assault group which has arrived in the eastern Mediterranean.

It is in close proximity to the coast of Syria. On board the ship are 70 fighter-bombers and a total 8,000 US servicemen and women.

The Dwight D Eisenhower joined the amphibious assault helicopter carrier Iwo Jima, which has been in the area for almost two weeks.

In all there are now 17 American warships off the Syrian coast.

Thousands of American troops near Syrian shore on USS Eisenhower

The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, a large US Navy aircraft carrier that holds fighter bomber squadrons and 8,000 men on board, has appeared off Syrian coast yesterday amid arising speculations that the US is ready to attack Syria though there was no official announcement so far.

Media have already put forward suggestions that if Syrian President Bashar al-Assad decides to use chemical weapons against the opposition, the US will intervene the country militarily “within days”.

According to DEBKAfile, the US has already near Syria at its disposal 10,000 fighting men, 17 warships, 70 fighter-bombers, 10 destroyers and frigates.

“The muscle is already there to be flexed,” a US official told the London Times about the US military’s presence outside of Syria.

When you drop barrel bombs on homes and families. When you rape and torture peoples womenfolk and children. When you don’t spare the young or old. Don’t act surprised if ‘some’ people are pushed to desperation.

The army at this point HAS collapsed into militias. Assad is relying almost entirely on his Alawite fighters to continue the war. Most of the Sunni officers have either defected in public or in secret. And at this point no Sunni soldiers have any motivation to fight for the regime at all.

The reason the regime is losing territory is because many of its troops have abandoned it. Anyone who argues otherwise is either lying or living with their heads stuck in the sand.

Now we are being told that chaos is coming as if the there was no chaos before. The only difference is that the chaos of the regime was organized to insure one thing and one thing only the constant enrichement of the very few at the expense of all Syrians.

In this so called new chaos of which only a fraction of Aleppo is suffering from in contrast to the vast areas under the FSA where things are fine the pro regime want us to run back to the organized chaos of the regime.

Your regime is finished and it had in its own seeds from its very inception the seeds of its own self destruction being built on hatred and envy and revenge and sectarianism and cronysim and graft and corruption and with empty slogans and divisive policies.

Now we are being told that chaos is coming as if the there was no chaos before. The only difference is that the chaos of the regime was organized to insure one thing and one thing only the constant enrichement of the very few at the expense of all Syrians.

In this so called new chaos of which only a fraction of Aleppo is suffering from in contrast to the vast areas under the FSA where things are fine the pro regime want us to run back to the organized chaos of the regime.

Your regime is finished and it had in its own seeds from its very inception the seeds of its own self destruction being built on hatred and envy and revenge and sectarianism and cronysim and graft and corruption and with empty slogans and divisive policies.

Sbeaking of “bubbets”, you’re asking for ELECTED leaders to step down?
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Bashar Assad was elected by higher margin than all three as President of Syria. I would say his vote count as good as these too. Let’s not get technical here… So many Syrians don’t understand why not voting Assad out instead of bombing Syria to dust and try to kill him and his adminstration by cutting heads off.

will Assad use chemical weapons? unlikely but not completely ruled out, for now it looks like scud missiles are being used:

Forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad’s regime have fired Scud missiles at rebel fighters in Syria, according to US and Nato officials, in what appears to be a further escalation of the conflict.
In Brussels, a Nato official expanded on a report in the New York Times, saying that a number of short-range ballistic missiles had been launched inside Syria.
“Allied intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets have detected the launch of a number of unguided, short-range ballistic missiles inside Syria this week … Trajectory and distance travelled indicate they were Scud-type missiles,” said the Nato official.

The leader of Syria’s opposition coalition has called on the country’s Alawite minority to launch a campaign of civil disobedience against their Alawite president, Bashar al-Assad.

Speaking at the Friends of Syria meeting in Morocco, Moaz al-Khatib also urged Iran to withdraw personnel he said were supporting Assad in the 20-month-old Syrian conflict.

Reuters quoted him saying:

We send a direct message to the Alawite brethren. The Syria revolution is extending its hand to you, so extend your hand back and start civil disobedience against the regime because it repressed you like it repressed us.
We demand that Iran withdraws all of its experts from Syria and we demand the leadership of Hezbollah to withdraw all of its fighters if found in Syria, because their blood must not be spilt defending callous and antiquated regime.

An attack on a Syrian village on Tuesday killed or injured as many as 200 members of the Alawite community.

Casualty counts varied, but several activists said they could confirm 10 dead. The opposition-linked Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 125 were hurt or killed in a series of explosions that destroyed several houses in the town of Aqrab. There were no reports on Syria’s state media.

Other activists blamed Assad’s forces for the attack, which they said involved the shelling of a house in which at least 200 Alawites were hiding.

The circumstances of the attacks were unclear and impossible to verify independently. Syrian authorities tightly restrict the activities of journalists. The incident is the first known report of any large scale assault on Alawites in the 20-month-old Syrian uprising.

Syrian journalist Hassan Hassan highlights the video of an Alawite woman speaking about the alleged massacre.

The woman was speaking to members of the Free Syrian Army and fears for her safety, he said in a brief translation of the clip. She also said she had to flee with Sunnis to avoid being killed by shabiha – the armed militia loyal to Assad.

Syria’s opposition leader, Moaz al-Khatib, called on the US on Wednesday to reconsider its decision to designate an extremist rebel group as a terrorist organisation, as more than 100 countries meeting in Morocco recognised his coalition as the legitimate representative of Syrians.

The Syrian National Coalition, the newly formed group that has sought to unite rebel forces, received a significant diplomatic boost at the Friends of Syria conference in Marrakesh, increasing the isolation of the regime of Bashar al-Assad and its supporters in Russia and China.

Ahmet Davutoglu, the Turkish foreign minister, said: “Today we are saying there is an alternative [to the regime].”

[Khatib] the moderate preacher, chosen as president of the SNC last month, expressed his rejection of extremist ideology but said the fact that religion motivated Syrians to fight against oppression was nothing to be ashamed of.

His attempt to distance the coalition from the US, while at the same time seeking American support, underlined the opposition’s difficulties in satisfying its increasingly Islamist and radicalised domestic audience as well as its western partners.

His words appeared aimed at Syrian rebel groups, many of whom were infuriated by the US move against al-Nusra and the perception that Washington has done little to help them in their cause.

Opposition officials say that groups such as al-Nusra, which include foreign jihadis, were welcomed into rebel ranks because of their military expertise and sources of funding, and at a time when appeals for foreign military intervention were ignored.

Despite the international backing for the SNC, the Morocco meeting also highlighted the gap between the expectations of the opposition and what their foreign supporters are willing to deliver.

“For the Syrian street, recognition of the coalition is just ink on paper. We need practical steps on humanitarian support and help for people to defend themselves,” Suhair Atassi, vice-president of the SNC, told the Financial Times.

Western delegates said it was unlikely that opposition calls for weapons would be immediately heeded, although William Hague, the UK foreign secretary, emphasised that Britain did not rule out any option to save lives.

A western diplomat said any decision on arming the rebels depended in part on their ability to show sufficient discipline and command and control to ensure that the weapons did not fall into extremist hands.

As the rebels continued to fight regime forces near Damascus airport, diplomats said the battle for control of the city was now starting and is likely to be one of the bloodiest episodes in the conflict.

A western diplomat said the most important progress made by the coalition was the creation of the crisis assistance unit that will be working with local councils on the ground.

The effectiveness of this unit, said the diplomat, would be crucial to establishing the SNC’s credibility. The unit is made up of Syrian technocrats who are working with western representatives, including those from the UK.

We send a direct message to the Alawite brethren
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I am sure they think like me, we got the message loud and clear from that 12 year old kid beheading and slaughtering the Alawites men like cattle. No fool will trust an idiot stooge of Obama promises of forgiveness the very next day.

At least the opposition recognizes that this theatrical ‘recognition’ is purely symbolical and is only to give the opposition some encouragement to tackle the most difficult part of their mission: Gain the hearts and mind of all the Syrians and control the armed rebels.

The FOS practical aid to win the battle is therefore depending on a lot of conditions the opposition may never fulfill…

Such bombings have been a trademark of Islamic radicals fighting alongside the rebels, raising concerns about the extremists’ role in the civil war.

On Wednesday afternoon, attackers detonated two explosive devices before an explosives-laden car went off near the entrance of the Interior Ministry building in Kafar Souseh district in Damascus. The blast knocked down walls inside the ministry building, scattering debris on the street and shattering windows in nearby structures, including at the Egyptian Embassy.

Opposition to the designation is only gaining momentum within Syria’s anti-Assad groups. The Syrian National Council (SNC), which was the face of the revolution until being superseded by a new coalition, released a statement rejecting the move. The SNC, which still maintains considerable influence in opposition politics, goes on to explain that the Assad regime’s massacres are the true terrorism in Syria today. The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood also stated that the decision to designate Jabhat al-Nusra was “very wrong.” The recently elected chief of staff of the Free Syrian Army, Brig. Gen. Salim Idriss, piled on, saying Jabhat al-Nusra was not a terrorist organization, and “depend on young, educated Syrians” for their efforts.

Syrians are also planning to take to the streets to express their solidarity with Jabhat al-Nusra this week. A coalition of coordinating committees and rebel battalions has called for demonstrations this Friday under the slogan “No to the Interference of America — We Are All Jabhat al-Nusra.” The statement originally had 29 signatories, but now contains more than 100.

Even more worrisome from the perspective of the United States, there are tentative signs that Jabhat al-Nusra has also been providing local services. While the designation signals that the U.S. government is committed to isolating the group, its heroics on the battlefield and its work to provide for the basic needs of the Syrian people could signal that it is becoming embedded within the social fabric of the population.

Jabhat al-Nusra’s provision of social services was first highlighted in an Aug. 19 video released by the group, titled “Fulfillment of the Vow #2.” The video shows the group’s Lajna al-Ighatha (“Relief Committee”) providing foodstuffs to individuals in rural areas surrounding the eastern city of Deir al-Zour. More recently, according to the Syrian news site al-Zaman al-Wasl, Jabhat al-Nusra provided more than 20,000 bundles of bread to individuals in Aleppo governorate after an acute crisis occurred. The Coordinating Council in Aleppo, a local civilian opposition body established in August 2011, also reported that Jabhat al-Nusra provided barrels of fuel for an Aleppo hospital to run generators after long power outages.

In a conference call today, a senior U.S. official explained the designation by saying that it was intended to “expose” Jabhat al-Nusra, and make it clear that the group’s ideology “has no role in post-Assad Syria.” If it succeeds in doing that, the decision will have been the correct one. But given the intense opposition to this move by many quarters of the opposition, the administration should rededicate itself to efforts that show it is on the side of the Syrian people — not only by providing humanitarian aid to areas affected by Assad’s scorched-earth policy, but also by recognizing the new Syrian opposition coalition and providing weapons to more moderate rebel groups.

Syrian forces have dropped incendiary bombs on populated areas, Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday, calling on the authorities to stop using a weapon that causes “especially cruel human suffering”.
…..
Syria has not signed the 1980 Convention on Conventional Weapons which includes restrictions on the use of incendiary weapons in areas with large civilian populations.

HRW said it did not know the size of Syria’s incendiary weapon stockpile which it believed was supplied by the former Soviet Union.

Incendiary weapons are not chemical arms, which Western powers have warned Syrian authorities not to use in their fight against rebels seeking to oust President Bashar al-Assad.

I think the opposition has long ago won the heart and mind of the Syrian people. This rather happened by default, by virtue of Assad barbarity and oppression. As a Syrian, I can simply state that I would choose ANY form of rule over Batta’s even if I risk living under a restrictive Islamist theocracy similar to Iran’s. Assad’s crimes against humanity made it rather very simple: Any one but him.

“I think the opposition has long ago won the heart and mind of the Syrian people”
Tara, the NC does not represent the whole opposition,and the opposition does not represent all Syrians, to say that the NC is the sole rep of Syrian people,as suggested by a number of governments, is not just a stretch it is a joke. Those people at the NC can form a party and try to win votes,if we ever have elections in Syria, but they should not be shoved down the throat of Syrians in a way similar to what happened in Iraq, look at the results !!
Rebels have not made enough advances in the last 2 weeks to justify this fever in the media and they seem to be retreating in some places,they tried to assassinate Shaar,Interior Minister, but he survived the bombing of the back building of MOI which killed a number of Syrians today, I think the initial death toll stands at 7

According to a representative from Human Rights Watch, there is a strong chance the current human rights violations will pale in comparison to those when the regime falls, which might involve reprisals against former government supporters and wholesale sectarian massacres on the order of Iraq _ especially if groups like the now blacklisted Jabhat al-Nusra remain powerful.

The new Syrian opposition has to take into account how they are going to manage justice in the “new Iraq,” cautioned Tamara al-Rifai of the rights group.

“We are calling on the Syrian delegation to include transitional justice in any political plan they are doing and calling on the international community to help support that,” she said.

I think the opposition has long ago won the heart and mind of the Syrian people. This rather happen by default , by virtue of Assad barbarity and oppression. As a Syrian, I can simply state that I would choose ANY form of rule over Batta’s even if I risk living under a restrictive Islamist theocracy similar to Iran’s. Assad’s crimes against humanity made it rather very simple: Any one but him.
__________________________________________________________________

Oooohhhhh Suuuuuuuuuuure, That is why they are marching in drove in Damascus, Aleppo and Homs for the Opposition.

How frustrating for the Assad regime to be sitting there in its trashed playpen, having burst its boiler to punish those irrelevant, worthless Syrians who failed to show it respect and wanted to make it relinquish its “personal” territory, property and control of citizens (ie Syria).

Now it has ONE HUNDRED nations failing to show it respect and declaring it has no legitimate claim to that property, territory and control of citizens.

DAMASCUS, Dec. 11 (Xinhua) — Syrian troops continued on Tuesday securing the road to the international airport of the capital Damascus, eliminating a number of rebels’ snipers who have been positioning in the nearby Akraba suburb that overlooks part of the road.

During a trip to Akraba on Tuesday, reporters saw an army tank firing at a building on which rooftops snipers have been nesting to target military convoys.

After eliminating those snipers, the road to the airport has become safer, sources said.

At the airport, meanwhile, the Syrian flag was seen fluttering on the top while baggage porters and bellhops were standing at the main gates.

However, the reporters haven’t been granted permission to enter the airport as trips and commercial flights are still suspended until the road is fully secured.

The armed militias have tried to cut off the 30-kilometer road from the Akraba point in a bid to paralyze the capital and pave the way for other armed groups to storm the capital from other routes. Moreover, the rebels have issued a statement warning civilians of heading toward the airport and announcing the area a war zone.

However, the Syrian army has unleashed a strong firepower, rendering thousands of armed fighters killed or injured.

“but they should not be shoved down the throat of Syrians in a way similar to what happened in Iraq, look at the results !!”

As if Batta was freely elected and was not shoved down the throat of the Syrian people. Nevertheless Ghufran, what people fail to understand is that the NC does not have to represent all the strata of the Syrian people. It is a revolution for God sake and not every one has revolted. The NC should only represent the revolutionaries while the rest of the people should sit it out, as long as the NC maintains the platform and the goal of the revolution which is freedom, karama, and social justice to all. Also in all honesty, it just follows that shabeeha killers are not represented and the closet Shabeeha ie those who cheered and justify the killing should also not be represented.

On another subject, in my views, killers shall be killed in new Syria. In a due process of course as justice should be served. Non -killer shabeehas should be given amnesty, and a new educational system in Syria that tackles historical deeply- ingrained hatred should be instituted to involve the Syrian Christian church too.

So this is from an eye witness account, A women in Aleppo, Syria living in areas under foreign terrorists control used kitchen knife to kill one of the Moslem Brotherhood / Free Syria army (Pro Israel Army) terrorists after he attempted to forcefully sexually molest her 13 years old boy. Afterward the women was surrounded by town people and escorted out of harm way from Moslem Brotherhood Terrorists Subhumans patrolling the town against the will of the people.

Stay in your illusion.. The FOS meeting has been a disaster for the Opposition. They got nothing else that 100 taps on their back: No diplomatic recognition, no weapons, but a huge ‘to do ‘list . If they fail to execute it, they will be dumped just like the SNC.

Attasi is already pissed off and will probably soon follow the path of Basma Kodmani, while Al Khatib is trapped between the ones begging the USA to intervene and the ones asking them to get out. Not an enviable position.
The Russians are secretly happy to see the mess Obama is falling into by taking the lead off France and Qatar. Turkey, confused, has remained conspicuously discreet.
It is a turning point… but not to the direction the opposition was hoping.

After almost two years of being threatened, taken hostage, raped and murdered by the al-Nusra Front/FSA most Syrians long for the peaceful days of Assad. This is why we see demonstrations in areas of Aleppo demanding the “rebels” leave and calling for the SAA.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syria has issued arrest warrants against former Lebanese prime minister Saad al-Hariri and a close political ally for “terrorist crimes” of financing and arming rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad, the state news agency SANA said.

It said the warrants against Hariri, Oqab Saqr and rebel Louay Meqdad had been sent to the international police agency Interpol. Lebanon is deeply divided over the revolt in Syria.

Hariri, whose Lebanese unity government was toppled in January last year when pro-Assad parties pulled out of the cabinet, has been an active opponent of the Syrian president since Syria’s uprising erupted 20 months ago.

Rebels have privately named some Lebanese politicians including Saqr, a member of Hariri’s Future Movement who has been based in Syria’s northern neighbor Turkey for months, as a channel for arms supplied to Assad’s opponents from outside.

Saqr says he has provided only humanitarian aid and that taped conversations with Meqdad in which they appeared to discuss weapons supplies, aired by a Lebanese television two weeks ago, had been doctored.

“(Syria’s) prosecutor-general was informed after the recordings uncovered the involvement of (the three men) in providing money and weapons to the terrorists in Syria,” SANA quoted Attorney-General Mohammad Marwan al-Loji as saying.

Loji said the recordings also showed Hariri, Saqr and Meqdad were involved in sending Lebanese fighters into Syria from Lebanon. Fourteen Lebanese and Palestinian gunmen were killed inside Syria last week, close to the Lebanese border.

“As soon as they heard the recordings, Lebanese authorities should have lifted (parliamentary) immunity against the deputies involved and handed them to the Lebanese or Syrian judiciary, in accordance with agreements between the two countries,” he said.

His comments came on the day that a Lebanese judge summoned two Syrian officers, including General Ali Mamlouk the head of Syria’s national security bureau, to a Beirut military court session on January 14.

The two men were indicted along with former Lebanese information minister Michel Samaha in August over a plot said to have been aimed at stoking violence in Lebanon.

The only rats I see are the ones you are defending. In any case, when you come back in the future with a new alias, can you stay away
from Erine, Erin , ..or its derivatives. And by the way Hans, why did you feel the need to reincarnate into other aliases? I am curious to know the psychological reason for it.
—

I am resisting an overwhelming desire to post under my real name. I just miss my real name.

But at the Turkish border town of Antakya late last month, Syrian rebels spoke openly of the Saudi and Qatari intermediaries who dole out weapons on behalf of their governments. The chief Saudi supplier is said to be a Lebanese figure named Okab Saqr, who belongs to the political coalition of Saudi Arabia’s chief ally in Lebanon, Saad Hariri.

“The amounts are not that much,” said Maysara, 40, a lean rebel commander from the northern town of Saraqib, who withheld his last name for safety reasons. “They deliver weapons once every few weeks.” In one recent shipment, he said, a 200-man fighting brigade received six Russian-made AS Val assault rifles, and thousands of rounds of ammunition.

Maysara added that Mr. Saqr seemed to struggle with supply issues; he once saw Mr. Saqr asking rebels for the name and contacts of a weapons dealer from the former Yugoslavia that he was hoping to meet. The logistics of acquiring and distributing weapons in such a chaotic environment are daunting, and the rebels are anxious about infiltration by the Syrian government’s notorious intelligence agents.

The Saudi government appears to be trying to finance more secular rebel groups, Maysara said, while the Qataris appear to be closer to the Muslim Brotherhood. But these distinctions are slippery, in part because rebel groups adapt their identities to gain money and weapons. One group, in an almost comical bid for support, named itself the Rafik Hariri brigade, after the former Lebanese prime minister and Saudi ally who is believed to have been assassinated by the Syrians, and whose son Saad is influential in doling out Saudi support to the rebels.

I have nothing to whine about. Events are all going against your predictions and you twin brother’s.
I guess you have much more reasons to whine as all these ‘secret’ plans are failing like in a game of bowling.

I have nothing to whine about. Events are all going against your predictions and you twin brother’s.
I guess you have much more reasons to whine as all these ‘secret’ plans are failing like in a game of bowling.”

Ewe @74,

I am not the one with the crystal ball. You are the ever crystall ball gazer. Not a single one of your comments lacks one prediction or another. I keep looking at the ground and see more FSA’s with their good Nusra friends making victories. And I keep seeing your jackal going deeper and deeper into obscurity.

I will give an advice which is not one of my favorite habits. When you wake up, make your regular morning three cries of ماء, then go to your sheep mom and suckle for the day. Get a piece of clean cotton cloth. Wipe up your crystal balls thoroughly, and then gaze intently with wide open eyes fixed right at the center. Then you may be able to see. If that doesn’t work then have an eye doctor appointment with your jackal. I was told he may be able to help.

Canada tells Syrian opposition it won’t be recognized until it rejects extremism despite U.S. acceptance

Canada told the Syrian opposition Tuesday it must reject extremism and embrace minorities before Ottawa will recognize its legitimacy as a successor to President Bashar Al-Assad, according to a federal official.

Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird explained Canada’s preconditions for official recognition at a meeting with representatives of the opposition Syrian National Coalition in Morocco on Tuesday, the official said.

“He outlined the importance of rejecting extremism, the inclusion of minorities, and the importance of the role of women in a post-Assad era,” said the official, who did not want to be named.

On Wednesday, Mr. Baird will publicly spell out those preconditions during an address before the Friends of the Syrian People meeting — a gathering of more than 100 countries in Morocco’s Marrakesh working to bolster legitimate opposition to the Assad regime.

While France, Britain, Turkey and the Gulf Cooperation Council have already recognized the newly formed Syrian National Coalition, and President Barack Obama confirmed Tuesday the U.S. would do the same, Mr. Baird was taking a more cautious approach.

Canada has an honorable record of standing up against Islamist extremists and it is now undeniable that the Syrian soonite insurgents are Islamist radicals! An ideology that PM Harper and CSIS have correctly identified as the greatest threat to Canada’s national security! Canada will NOT bestow diplomatic recognition to the representatives of the Syrian soonite Islamist radicals!

The West has seen how Ikhwanis and Salafis have already seized power in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt!

When you resort to cheap insults, I know that doubts is eating you up and that you have problem sleeping. I don’t.
I made two predictions, one that the SNC will collapse and it did, the second one is that the FSA will have the same fate. These are the three possibilities: It will get “reorganized”, amputated from the most islamist extremists and get a new name to something like the DFSA ( democratic…) or it will be annihilated in internal fights with the Al Nusra and Cie or it will join al Nusra and disappear underground like the Sunni terrorists in Irak.
In all cases, it will not be the same FSA we knew.

Didn’t you predict the imminent fall of Damascus or was it your twin brother?

Russia was surprised with obama’s recognition? Are the Russians stupid or what? Miss Piggy told us repeatedly the recognition is forthcoming Dec 12. Do they not listen to the news?
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Assad forces fire Scud missiles in Syria, U.S. officials say
By Michael Pearson and David Ariosto, CNN

“As the regime becomes more and more desperate, we see it resorting to increased lethality and more vicious weapons moving forward,” said U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland. “And we have in recent days seen missiles deployed.”
Amid the growing concern about missiles, Syria’s newly formed opposition coalition won recognition from international supporters on Wednesday in Morocco.
The Friends of Syria group, representing more than 100 countries and organizations, agreed Wednesday to recognize the National Coalition of the Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people.

The designation immediately broadens international recognition for the coalition and should pave the way for additional support for the rebel cause, said Brookings Institution analyst Salman Shaikh, who attended the session in Marrakech, Morocco.
“What this recognition does, I think, is give the coalition more confidence in its workings,” Shaikh said.

At the Morocco meeting, Burns told Syrian rebel leaders that their newfound recognition is freighted with the weight of international expectations.
…
Obama’s statement Tuesday came as a surprise to Russia, said Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
He said an agreement he had worked out in Geneva, Switzerland, with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton laid out a path for a negotiated transfer of power, but he said the new coalition’s goals call for it to “overturn the regime, dismantle government institutions and refuse dialogue with the Syrian government.”
“We inquired with our American partners as to how that conforms with the logic of the Geneva communique, and they told us that the most important thing is to unite the opposition, and its platform can, quote, ‘be corrected,'” Lavrov said.
…http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/12/world/meast/syria-civil-war/index.html

What insults are you talking about? Don’t tell me you are playing the victim just to gain sympathy by insinuating that people are insulting you!! That is what I call cheap.

Just look at your last comment. Could you count how many predictions it contains? I was able to count up to 5 and then lost count.

None of these predictions of yours came true as you claim, and those you are awaiting are as likely to happen as the ‘man’ you think has been hiding in the tunnel for thousand years will ‘decide’ to come up to the surface.

Not content with selling their children to khaleeji paedophiles, soonites are now willing to murder their spawn in order to escpae from the mess they have created! What wretched creatures soonites are: they destroyed their country and their lives in a vain attempt to seize power!

Russia is acting surprised to give the impression that it was not informed. It knew very well what was going to be announced and it was in agreement according to the plan unraveling .
The plan has been agreed by the USA and Russia with Lakhdar Ibrahimi: Boost publicly and symbolically the coalition so it will accept the secrets conditions attached to its recognition.
Apart from the conditions spelled out by the Canadian ministry, who by the way is acting under the USA request, the other one which is looming, is the acceptance of the coalition to enter into negotiations without Bashar resigning.
I see that request coming probably when Al Khatib will be having talks with Obama. Al Khatib may not be opposed to such plan, but many of his team are. Let’s see if he will be able to convince them.
Weren’t you wondering for what Lakhdar Ibrahimi is been paid for? That’s what he has been concocting with the USA and Russia.
Of course, Qatar , France and Turkey are totally sidelined from this plan.

US Recognizes Unelected Terrorists as Syrian “Representatives”
US admits Al Qaeda “amongst” Syrian rebels, recognizes them as the “legitimate representative of the Syrian people.”

The Syrian Army is fighting Al Qaeda.
December 12, 2012 (LD) – As expected, after a long pause of feigned “consideration,” the US has recognized the militants it has been arming, funding, aiding logistically and supporting diplomatically since as early as 2007, as the “legitimate representatives of the Syrian people,” with the added caveat, “in opposition to the Assad regime.” The Wall Street Journal would report that US President Barack Obama’s announcement actually read:
“The Syrian National Coalition for Revolutionary and Opposition Forces is reflective and representative enough of the Syrian population that we consider them the legitimate representative of the Syrian people in opposition to the Assad regime.”
The bizarre, uncertain wording sends a message of both uncertainty and resounding illegitimacy, indicating that the US itself recognizes the true nature of the so-called “Syrian” opposition is apparent to an increasing number of people both in public office and across the public, and that a certain degree of rhetorical distance must be kept.

The overt, extremist nature of the militants operating in Syria has become increasingly difficult for the West to paper over. Torrents of videos and confirmed reports documenting militant atrocities, including several involving the machine gunning of bound prisoners, and a particularly gruesome video of a child handed a sword by militants to hack off the heads of bound men wearing civilian clothing, has confirmed the worst fears expressed by geopolitical analysts and foreign governments around the world – that the Syrian opposition is in fact Al Qaeda.http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/

In diplomacy, nobody opens all his cards from the start and U-turns are very frequent, especially with the USA.

If the USA now dares say that the opposition must negotiate with Bashar, it looses all its credibility as Obama has been asking Bashar to step down. Yet, the USA has now become convinced that removing Bashar by force will create an earthquake and an increase of the violence as the unreliability of the FSA, polluted by extremists has become overwhelmingly recognized. Yet, they can’t admit it publicly.

So now they seem to openly boosting the political opposition while undermining the FSA. Without the weapons and Al Nusra fighters the FSA will probably collapse. Without a military wing, the coalition will be weak and vulnerable. They will soon have to renounce becoming an “alternative government”. Therefore either they collapse too or they accept to negotiate with a regime that is still strong and united, politically and militarily.
That will be presented in the media as the coalition’s ‘heroic and courageous’ act to save lives and the USA’s honor will be safe.

In any case, as I said before, if the conditions spelled out by Bashar are met, he will probably offer to “stand aside” during the negotiations, while remaining the president, by allowing others in the government to negotiate a transition that will ultimately include some kind of elections.
That’s my analysis as of the present situation.
How will the die-hard France and Qatar react to that, I don’t know but I think they will just be nuisances. Turkey will follow the US as the game is now in the hands of Russia, China and the USA.
Certainly many events and surprises may change that course of events and bring us somewhere else.. But that’s the politics uncertainty.

Dolly have a glass of milk and relax. The US could not subdue the Taliban, Israel could not subdue Gaza and so on.

The entire reason for the chemical weapons stories, the more-recent Scud stories and similar fairy tales is to get the US to attack Syria. If the rag-tag FSA was doing so well they would not need Obama to ride to the rescue on cruise missiles.

Not much gained from the “recognition’ just more challenges and disappointment for the opposition.

US recognises Syrian opposition coalition

Alice Fordham and Phil Sands
Dec 13, 2012

MARRAKECH, MOROCCO // Syrian rebels celebrated a significant political gain yesterday when their revamped opposition coalition won formal recognition from the United States.

But delegates to a Friends of Syria conference here said the group still faces deep ideological splits and obstacles to its credibility with people inside Syria.
…
The SNC spokesman Yaser Tabbara said yesterday he hoped the EU would now lift sanctions on supplying heavy weapons to the rebels.

He outlined plans to appoint ambassadors, issue passports and appeal for US$500 million (Dh1.83bn) a month in international support to run the parts of the country now controlled by the opposition to Bashar Al Assad, the Syrian president. . Although Mr Tabbara said he hoped that the money would be pledged soon, other opposition members said this was unlikely.
…
Mr Tabbara, the SNC spokesman, said the coalition would continue to work with any group whose agenda was ending the suffering of the Syrian people – to include Jabhat Al Nusra. He said he worried that the perception on the ground would be that “the US is designating those who fight Bashar Al Assad as terrorists”.